Miryam's Space

We come from the water, living in the water go back to the water turn the world around. So is life!~Harry Belefonte        

  Source page to the Biblical and other texts referenced.

In this week’s parashah, Miriam, the sister of Aaron and Moses dies, and is buried. What is her brother’s reactions? The community’s? The Torah is completely silent, there is no response! Miriam’s name is part of my own Hebrew name, and literally has the word for water in it, Mayim in Hebrew. This is no coincidence.  Think of Miriam in the Torah, and you will think of water: Miriam watching as her baby brother was drawn from the Nile, Miriam singing and playing music, leading in dance and joy as the Israelites crossed the Sea of Reeds.

Suddenly as we enter chapter 20 of Bamidbar, in the wilderness, the Israelites arrive in the Wilderness of Tzin, meaning flat, and in the very next verse we hear: there is no water!

Rashi explains that since this statement follows immediately after the mention of Miriam’s death, we may learn from it that during the entire forty years they had a magical “well” through Miriam’s merit   Pirke Avot lists this Miraculous well as one of the Ten things created before sundown on that first Shabbat eve!

Water is life! The most abundant and foundational component of living things The universal solvent, so weird and wonderful, that it clings to all -it making life possible. Water soaks the roots allowing crops to grow, and we humans cannot survive without drinking it for more than a couple of days. And yes, Climate change is increasing drought around the world, which causes famine and strife.  Strife will rear its head as a result of drought in parashat Chukat as well.

We live on “the water planet” an image achieved by photographs taken by astronauts that saw our home planet as that gorgeous blue terrarium in space. This image was also was anticipated by the ancient Book, Sefer Yetzirah, where the letter Mem represents water, and was created by the Wind, which was created by the Breath of the Holy One.

From Sefer Yetzirah: Translation~R’ Jill Hammer Waters from Ruach Wind. G!D also engraved and carved in Them: chaos and void, mud and clay; engraved Them as a kind of garden; carved them as a kind of wall, wove them as a kind of ceiling

Notice the earth begins as mud and clay from waters How Does G!d carve waters? With words! And as a weaver. And then by sealing off this precious bubble of life, from the dangerous void beyond with the letters of G!d’s name Yud, Hey and Vav according to Sefer Yetzirah.

The word Yetzirah itself means creation by weaving, and in Kabbalistic philosophy is one of the Four Worlds, or levels of existence. These levels are all present, but our perceptions may be limited to one or another more strongly during our varied experiences. Yetzirah is the level associated with water, and with emotions, particularly of love.  Love, the emotion most intimately creative of life is expressed most powerfully in Shir HaShirim, Song of songs.  Love is the gift that Miriam always brought: connecting Yocheved with her baby, bringing song and joy to the newly liberated.  Love is as fierce as death (Song 8:6), and certainly Miriam’s death represented the loss of this love. Mayim Rabim, many waters cannot quench this love of ours! Is another echo to the song of songs 8:7, mayim rabim, many (or great) waters flows from the rock. The other echo to creation is  chotam, the seal placed on the heart echoes the sealing off of the water planet in Sefer Yetzirah.

Following Miriam’s death, the tragedies of Aaron and Moses’ lives will unfold because there is no water of another kind.  Did you notice? Brothers Moshe and Aharon do not mourn, they shed no tears.

Immediately, the community gangs up on the dry-eyed brothers.  They reach to G!d for outside help.  But within them tears are needed for wholeness.  I spent most of my life with tears locked within. Oh I’d cry at sad movies… but needed much inner opening work to cry at loss. HOW COULD THEY NOT MOURN THEIR SISTER!  Moses and Aaron receive their answer of how to help with the Israelite’s thirst as G!d instructs them in the ways of creation: “Speak, as I spoke, to the rock!” They struck instead. They called the people Marim – you bitter Rabble!  The Rock yielded its water. It had water in it because it was made from water according to Sefer Yetzirah!  The people, Rashi says are not just Marim, rabble, but teachers, Morim  to Moshe and Aaron: it turns out Miriam’s well was always a rock, and they knew it! Now it was indistinguishable from the other rocks. Morim, has the same letters as, you guessed it: Miriam!

In beautiful song, written in 1923 “HaKotel” that speaks longingly of the western wall, the lyric cries: there are men with hearts of stone! (Joel Engel). It is the rock of Moses’ and Aaron’s hearts that must be opened, and the waters of tears that must flow.  Perhaps the blue planet, the terrarium suspended in the void, exists within the water of G!d’s teardrop, or the water that gushes from the Holy One’s broken heart the mess we humans have a tendency to make in this world.

Torah is also likened to water (Bereshit Rabba 66:1) and by extension to love. If we could reach out to one another, and to the earth in love, if we can find the tears for the suffering of children both ours, and those of the stranger, find tears for the destruction of life and beauty in the world, then maybe we can get our act together to preserve the precious variety of life on this blue planet.We come from the water, living in the Torah, Go back to the water, turn the world around. Oh so is life, Ah so is life!